


i've seen it in the flights of birds, i've seen it in you

by Junkyard_Rose



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Open Relationships, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, chris chow saved my life, dex is quietly transgender in the background, farmer is awesome, i haven't written anything for 84 years, nursey is the best boyfriend, supportive friends!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 19:17:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Junkyard_Rose/pseuds/Junkyard_Rose
Summary: Chris has always had a big heart, had a lot of love to give.





	

**Author's Note:**

> check please belongs to ngozi u

Chris has always had a big heart. He can’t help that he’s got a lot of love to give. It’s not always worked out in his favour. He’ll always remember being six years old, sobbing his heart out onto his mother’s shoulder because the injured bird he carried home and tried to nurse back to health died in the night. He’s always been an easy crier, too, not good at keeping his feelings inside.

Falling in love with Farmer was so quick and easy that it felt natural. He never had a big eureka moment. It was something he gradually became aware of over a course of weeks, what it meant when he looked at her and felt like he had the summer sky inside his chest. He told her right away and her lips curled up into a surprised smile, and she said it back. Chris hasn’t stopped walking on sunshine since, which is why it’s so surprising the first time he looks at Nursey and _wants_.

They’re in the quad, the four of them, Chris and Farmer sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, pressed together from chest to ankle, studying on their respective laptops. Dex is a few feet away, frowning down at a dog-eared textbook, and Nursey – Nursey is stretched out in the late autumn sun, head tipped back, eyes shut, long legs stretched out, the first two buttons of his shirt undone. He’s either daydreaming or really, actually asleep, both of which he’s prone to doing in public. There are three different red-gold leaves tangled in his messed-up hair, trademark green hat abandoned next to him. Chris looks at the curve of his mouth and the hollow of his throat, and wants to _touch_ so badly it makes him dizzy.

The guilt is immediate; Chris can feel himself blushing, ducks his head in shame and embarrassment. He feels like the worst kind of person. Farmer is right there, casually playing footsie with him. He wants to apologise to her, but then he’d have to explain why, and Nursey is only a few metres away, Dex even closer. No one is looking at him. Chris focuses on his laptop screen and tries to will the blush away.

A few minutes later, Dex snaps his textbook shut and makes a pained noise. “How the fuck do you always end up covered in _foliage_ ,” he asks Nursey, sounding a little pissed off but mostly bewildered and distressed.

“Leave him alone, Dex,” Chris chirps, trying to sound normal. “He’s photosynthesising.” Farmer snorts a little laugh. Nursey opens his eyes, blinking lazily up at them.

“Chill, Poindexter,” he drawls, sleep-slow, a little rough. “C, man, you’re looking a little red over there. Sunburn?”

Chris clears his throat, tries not to squirm. “Yeah, must be,” he says, feeling his heart rate pick up at the real concern in Nursey’s voice. He’s always been such a good friend to Chris, even way back on their taddy tour.

Chris is the _worst_ type of person.

-

“Honey,” says Bitty, hands on hips, “Whatever it is you think you’ve done wrong, it’s not half as bad as you’re thinking.” He’s using his bossy tone but his soft eyes.

“You don’t know that,” Chris says, distressed. Bitty is cutting dough into a lattice. Chris is sneaking bits of filling when he’s not looking.

“And even if it is,” Bitty continues, talking over him, “my mama always said there’s no wrong so bad it can’t be fixed by a heartfelt apology and a gesture of good will, usually a delicious pie. So, you get your fingers out of my filling and maybe when it’s done I’ll let you carry it off to whoever it is needs apologisin’ too.”

Just hearing Bitty’s voice is soothing. Chris had never heard a southern accent outside of _The Walking Dead_ before he came to Samwell, but now it’s right up there with the smell of his mother’s perfume, his father’s booming laugh, and Farmer’s bright smile as something he associates with the feeling of _home_. Chris can feel the anxiety building low in his stomach dissipate, tension he hadn’t been aware he was carrying lift.

“Thanks, Bits,” he says, and leans over for a hug, ends up with flour on his Sharks jersey. _So what?_ Chris thinks as he walks over to Farmer’s dorm later, carefully carrying the pie. He had a crush on a teammate. If he didn’t act on it, which he would _never_ , it’d pass in a couple of weeks. Everything would go back to normal.

-

It doesn’t pass.

Like a rain cloud lingering overhead, Chris’ tiny, horrible crush on Nursey grows and changes into something dark. Farmer had responded to his apology for briefly being attracted to someone who wasn’t her with reassurances that she wasn’t jealous, didn’t mind if he sometimes looked at other people.

“I do every now and then,” she’d admitted, sitting cross-legged on the floor, the two of them eating pie with their hands. “Not on purpose, but I can’t help it. _You_ couldn’t help it.”

They’d promised never to cheat on each other, and then he’d eaten her out, and they’d left it at that.

Ransom and Holster were taking it upon themselves to throw as many kegsters as they could before they graduate, which meant a regular roster of Nursey Patrol had been implemented. It had been Dex’s job for a while, but he’d been banned after Disaster #4, in which Nursey, very drunk, had plunged, naked except for his hat and a strategically placed sock, into the freezing pond while Dex, also very drunk, laughed himself breathless and filmed the whole thing on his phone.

“New rule: the frogs aren’t allowed to drown before I graduate,” Lardo had said through a yawn. “That would be so much paperwork, bros. I’m too tired for that shit.”

Chris didn’t mind Nursey Patrol; he’d figured out that Nursey was easier to control if Chris let him dance himself into exhaustion, and then pass out somewhere, hopefully in a bed. The trouble came in stopping him from hooking up with anyone while he was too drunk to consent.

Farmer was getting a water for a theatre girl who was also too drunk to consent while Chris kept an eye on Nursey, who was shaking it to a Beyoncé song, mouth hanging open a little, hips gyrating. Chris was just drunk enough to wish he was out there on the dance floor too, maybe touching Nursey, maybe being touched back. He wasn’t sure when Farmer came back; she was standing in his peripheral vison when he turned his head, watching him watch Nursey, a weird look on her face. At some point the party had begun to wind down around them. Chris might have been standing there for a while.

“Come on,” Farmer said. “Let’s go upstairs.”

She rode him so hard the bedframe shook, thumping loudly against the wall. After, she laid her head on his shoulder, still panting, and said, “I think I’d be okay with it.”

“Okay with what?” Chris was a little buzzed, both from the sex and the two beers he’d had earlier.

“You and Nursey,” Farmer clarified. “I’d be okay with you being with him.”

If Chris had anything in his mouth, he would have done a spit-take. As it was, he had no excuse as to why he chocked and gaped at her.

“I’ve looked it up,” Farmer continued firmly. “Open relationships. Polyamory, whatever you want to call it. I know how you feel about me. I know how I feel about you. I think we could make it work.”

Chris stared at her, lost for words.

“Think about it,” Farmer said, and kissed him on the cheek, leaned over to turn the lamp off. “Night, babe. I love you.”

-

Chris thought about it. They talked it over, and did some reading, and then talked some more. Farmer went out dancing with a girl from the soccer team as a test. When she told Chris about kissing her goodbye at her door, Chris surprised himself by not being jealous.

He didn’t mention it to the team. He especially didn’t tell Nursey, but he considered it. In the library, with Nursey complaining about all his assigned course material being ‘boring old white man poetry’. At team breakfast, sitting next to each other, knees almost touching. At practise, Nursey throwing chirps across the ice.

“Come on, baby, where’s your head at?” he teased, when Chris let an easy shot in, which made Chris blush and let in _another_ shot. After practise ended, Nursey jogged up to him and hooked an arm around his shoulder.

“You feeling okay, man? You’ve been spacey lately,” he asked, all gentle. Nursey always smelled good, like nice cologne and the expensive brand of moisturizer he liked. His hand was very soft and very warm where it sat casually on Chris’ upper arm.

Chris realised he was waiting for an answer. “Yeah, no, I’m – I’m good, I really am, just thinking about stuff? About, um, Caitlin?”

Nursey was, if anything, more concerned. “Shit, you guys fighting?”

“No, we’ve been good lately, like really good, I just, kind of,” Chris was aware he was blushing.

“Aw, C. Thinking of popping the big question?”

Chris elbowed him. _I’m thinking of popping you a question. It’s ‘Do you want to go out with me?’._ “Shut up. We’re actually, um, trying out, um,” he trailed off, embarrassed.

“Is it a kinky sex thing? Don’t be shy, man. You can tell me _anything_ ,” Nursey grinned wickedly. Nursey loved hearing other people’s sex stories, and frequently shared his own. Chris knew in _graphic_ detail how he’d lost his virginity, but there’d been a surprising lack of teasing when Dex admitted he’d yet to lose his. Nursey wouldn’t be mean about it, and he wouldn’t share it around. Chris took a deep breath.

“Cait and me are trying out an open relationship,” Chris told him. “She um, kind of has a girlfriend now? You know Aisha from the soccer team?”

“’Cait and _I_ ’,” Nursey corrected. Then, “That’s chill, bro. How’s it going?”

“Pretty good. I mean, it’s really new, but, we’re all meeting up to play video games later, so,” Chris snuck a look at him. Nursey was completely unfazed, his arm still around Chris’ shoulders. They’d been walking like that for longer than was normal, but Chris didn’t want to shrug him off. “Do you want to come? To hang out, I mean.”

“Hang out as a friend or hang out as a date?” Nursey asked, still unfazed.

“Oh. Um, whichever you want?”

Nursey’s grin was beautiful. “As a date, then,” he said, easily. “What time should I meet you?” and Chris was smiling too big to answer.

-

Not a lot changed.

Dating Derek Nurse, Chris discovered, was a lot like being his friend, only with more kissing. Chris hadn’t realised before how much time they spent together, but now he was conscious of every second, and it added up to a _lot_.

Nursey still sat by him at team breakfast, still carried his goalie bag to practise, still stayed over a couple of times a week, except now they held hands all the time and Nursey sometimes wrote him poetry, whispering into the curve of his jaw on the tail end of a kiss, sliding his soft hands up under Chris’ shirt.

Somehow, nobody noticed.

Chris thought their teammates might have started asking questions after the first time Ransom burst into Chris’ room unannounced and found them curled around each other in bed, spooning, but he didn’t even blink. Platonic affection flowed freely and easily in the Haus without so much as a _no homo,_ but Chris thought that dropping a kiss onto Nursey’s cheek at breakfast might have been enough to get it across that they were boyfriends now.

It was not.

Nursey called Chris _babe_ and _darling_ more than he used his actual name. Chris sat in his lap on movie night, their fingers entwinned. Bitty and Lardo gave them little sideways looks sometimes, but everyone else went on oblivious.

“This,” Chris complained, “is ridiculous!”

“You could always just tell them,” Farmer suggested, smiling wryly, snuggled into his shoulder.

“All I had to do was smile at you _once_ and they started chirping me about a girlfriend! And now I’m all over Nursey and all the time and no one gives us a second look!”

“The girlfriend part might have something to do with that,” Farmer offered. “You should just like, send out a group email. Two lines: ‘I am bisexual, and proving it by having a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time. Thanks for your understanding’, and then just never mention it again.”

Chris blinked at her. “Does that _work?”_

“It’s how I came out to my family in high school,” Farmer replied. “I wrote a formal letter that just said ‘I am a bisexual. Thanks for your acceptance’, and tacked it to the noticeboard in the kitchen.”

Nursey, doing his homework on the floor, snorted. “I never had to come out,” he said ponderingly. “My moms just started asking when I was in like, second grade, if there were any boys or girls I liked.”

Aisha, on Farmer’s other side, said, “Shit, don’t look at me. I’m a foster kid. I never said anything to anyone ‘cos I didn’t want to get sent back.” She didn’t sound particularly bothered by it. Aisha was so laid-back she made Nursey look highly strung. Chris liked her a lot, mostly because she made Farmer happy.

Chris had blurted it out over family dinner one night, completely without meaning too. His parents had been wonderful, hugging him and telling him how proud they were, how much they loved him. He’d called them immediately after his first date with Nursey, and gotten the same warm, accepting speech. His sisters had been worse, pressing for details, asking if he was good in bed.

The answer was yes, overwhelmingly, but they did not need to know that.

Nursey said, suddenly, “Yo, C, we could always just leak our sex tape.”

“We don’t have a sex tape?”

His wicked grin was back. “We could make a sex tape, and then leak it.”

“Oh my god, could you imagine the chirping?”

“I don’t know,” Farmer mused. “That’d be pretty hot.”

Aisha added, “I don’t even like boys and I’d watch that shit. You guys are cute.”

Chris blushed, and Nursey started laughing, staring up at him with the softest, most loving look Chris had ever seen. Chris’ heart felt so full it might have burst, so full of love for all the people in the room.

-

Dex is Chris’ best friend, and a good person, but Chris still sometimes looks at him and hears the words, _I thought someone on a team with Jack Zimmermann would be less good at baking, if you know what I mean_ , which is why it’s so frightening to sit down in the chair across from him in Annie’s and try to find the right words.

Nursey isn’t there, because even though they get along most of the time now, Nursey and Dex still rile each other up without even trying. Farmer is in class, texting him every now and then, making fun of the LAX bro who sits in front of her. Chris’ hands are clasped so tightly around his mug of hot chocolate that he’s afraid he’ll break it.

Chris had planned out a speech in his head as he walked here, but he’s long since forgotten it, which is why he just blurts out, “I’m dating Nursey,” and then freezes.

Dex’s face does something complicated. “You’re gay,” he says slowly, maybe a little angry, “and _cheating_ _on_ _Farmer_?”

“Oh, no!” Chris thinks he should have seen this coming. For two people who have literally nothing in common, Dex and Farmer are weirdly good friends. Chris had thought she might have told him about the polyamory thing, but apparently not.

“No, I’m bi, and we have an open relationship. We’re dating each other and dating other people. It’s not _cheating_.”

Dex relaxes. “Okay,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee. “Congrats, man. To Nursey and Farmer too.”

Chris beams at him, sends a message to his, Farmer, Nursey and Aisha’s group chat. _He said congrats! :) :) :)_

Nursey send back, _tell him i said he’s a nerd_ , then, _he just texted me and said he’ll kick my ass if I mess with you lol._

Dex puts his own phone away and says hopefully, “Hey, do you think Bits will make you a pie when you tell him?”

-

Bitty does make a pie. Bitty makes _four_ pies, one for each of them. “What’s Aisha’s favourite flavour? Is she allergic to anything? Go ask Farmer,” he had said, shoving Chris and Nursey out of the kitchen. “William, you stay, I’ll need an extra pair of hands, but for the love of god, wash them first.”

Chris and Nursey retreated up the stairs to make out as the smell of sugar and cinnamon drifted up the stairs. Their pies didn’t last long, and neither did the girls’, not will all four of them being athletes surrounded by other athletes, but Ransom and Holster started planning a kegster for them the second the dishes were put away. Chris was mortified when Lardo calmly handed them a gigantic box of condoms with a deadpan, “Stay safe, boys,” the twinkle in her eyes giving away her amusement. Chris was even more mortified when someone called Jack and Shitty on skype, Shitty’s loud, profanity-ridden congratulations exploding from the computer speaker, Jack’s quieter and more awkward, but not less heartfelt.

Nursey kissed him right there in the middle of the kitchen, sweeping and grand like they were in a movie. The moment was broken by Holster’s loud, overjoyed, “ _FIIIIINE!”_

Nursey pulled a bill out of his wallet and shoved it at the sin bin in Dex’s waiting hands, ignoring the muttered, “Man, between you guys and Jack and Bitty I’m gonna get that dryer _and_ a new binder by the end of the year,” and went straight back to kissing Chris.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> -and then they lived happily ever after  
> -SMH players are allowed to take money from the sin-bin for the following things: condoms, medical procedures, alcohol, and yes, transitional apparel. team's got your back, trans dex


End file.
